Summer Camp '25 Homework

Greetings, true believers! This has been a rather silent first half of the year for me, which I apologize for. As my story writing has taken more precedence, and things like work and life interfere with my energy, little has been spared for my worldbuilding. But, I hope that with the coming of Summer Camp, I can get myself back to a middle ground of sorts! So, to pre-game for the season, let's get this homework done!

Week 1: Nourishment

Assignment 1 - Theme Thinking

Nourishment is a key topic in a lot of my writing, intentionally or otherwise. Of course on the surface level, I love food, and so many characters love food, and if they don't there's usually a reason! In Edda especially, there's also the nourishment of Mana that's key to the story and setting. Magic and the Leylines can power many of the devices of daily life, but it needs to be kept clean and not overused in order to remain healthy, lest more disasters and monsters erupt from damaged Leylines. It's not the most delicate metaphor for natural resources, but I didn't intend it to be!

A lot of Edda also functions on a give and take relationship, much like the real world interplay in ecosystems. Magic gives, magic empowers, and magic is taken. Mind, Body, Soul, and so forth are avenues of energy for different forms of magic and combative arts to take, and even the economic systems have a good amount of barter and trade alongside the coins people toss around. There's all sorts of metaphysical nourishment to be found all over the setting.

Edda is by no means a post-scarcity environment, there's plenty of class and resource disparity to go around. In my time reworking Edda and putting (digital) pen to paper, I've even strove to make it less utopian than it had been previously, because even if a story isn't doom and gloom constantly conflict and hardship are where characters and arcs spring from. That being said, many places across Edda have universal standards for their citizens, meaning the common person will have enough to live, even if not enough to thrive. The conflict, then, primarily becomes who decides citizenship, eligibility, qualification, and what "enough" is at the end of the day? Those questions, and the people who fall through the cracks, are what makes for that class conflict, as well as filling the membership quota's of thieves guilds, bandit parties, and adventuring guilds the region over!

Assignment 2 - The Pledge

The past two years, I've gotten to the Diamond rank, and been excited to do so! This year, given the complications I've already had, I'm going to set my finish line at a more reasonable Gold, just in case they re-emerge to cause me problems. However, don't be surprised if you see me keep sprinting past that finish line, cause mama didn't raise a quitter! I don't know if I'm going to focus on a particular region or not, it tends to be better if the whole world is my oyster platter, but that being said my story writing has mainly been in Magnum Opus, so if I decide to fine tune my focus, it'll be there.

Assignment 3 - Repair Work

I'm pretty solid on my meta the last I left it, and I have gone through and changed some of the more egregious differences in older articles. However, if I do end up focusing on Magnum Opus, I might go in and refurbish some aspects of the worldbuilding there, as well as in the town of Wind. Perhaps, if time and energy allows, I'll make an article expanding more on the continent of Magnum Opus rather than the country, because the former has been through far more changes than the latter.

Week 2 - Roots

Assignment 1 - The Roots of the World

Since my assumption is that I'll be working on Edda as a whole, it would be incredibly exhaustive to list every culture, nation, etc and their historical roots. That being said, the modern social state of Edda is colored by a universal event: the Border Wars. Ending just a bit over 30 years before the story picks up, a majority of the world participated in it, or had their societies irrevocably shaped by them, and the next generation is growing specifically in it's shadow. For some, this means cultural fear and prejudice of another, such as many Agarthans (especially those not in the mountains) who distrust the people of Laputa, as the latter nations bid for independence was paid in blood by chemical attacks on the former. For others, this means living in a new, open world as the titanic paradigm shifts the war and it's consequences brought allowed minority voices to have greater focus or displace previously thought unchangeable leaders and influences. On the broadest scale, everyone is tired of war, and everyone is pushing for social and technological innovation. Those are the broadest roots that've taken hold of Edda, watered in blood and tears.

In the theoretical that I focus on Magnum Opus, the roots there are that Magnum Opus was born out of a rebellion and has for most of it's existence as Magnum Opus has championed progressiveness, innovation, and universal rights and benefits for their people, along with being a mercantile powerhouse. Culturally, there's also roots that come from it's neighbors, Atalanta and Afallon, although not necessarily embraced or enjoyed because they were the oppressive owners of the land before they had their freedom, which is paired with the pre-occupation cultures in what was The Seat of Giants who have long had their ways of life filed down, ignored, or treated like ancient nonsense now having to navigate in a modern world that has moved them forward without consideration for their own roots.

Assignment 2 - Intro Page

I've long since felt the front page of Edda has been pretty solid if a bit standard, but seeing the topic of the Primer and other worlds has got the gears turning about how exactly I could fix it up or lead to other avenues of my creativity. I suppose that once I start publishing my stories somewhere, I'll have proper areas to redirect to, and once I finish more of the base categories, I can have easy categories to lead to in a "start here for XYZ" sense.

Assignment 3 - Roots of Worldbuilding

I've been worldbuilding for as long as I've been writing, which has been most of my life, although I didn't consider it it's own separate form of creation for a long while. As for what I've learned to avoid, I've done my best to not only give enough detail to be enticing and full-formed, but not so much information that it detracts from the core themes at play. It's a line I have to thread very carefully for Edda, because as a TTRPG setting I want to make sure I have the information at hand and plot hooks for all kinds of possibilities, but as a story setting one must keep the concrete narrative and themes in mind. That doesn't stop me from having a million story ideas for Edda, but I can only write one at a time (currently, one day I'll invent that cloning machine!!!)

Week 3 - Metamorphosis

Ok this feels like a personal callout cause I, not even two weeks ago, finally read all of The Metamorphosis by Kafka. PS, a tragedy that resonated really hard with my mentally ill/neurodivergent self.

Assignment 1 - On Metamorphosis

The BIGGEST metamorphosis for Edda as a setting was the transformation of Mortal Forms into the various species of the world. In essence for the uninitiated, ambient Mana particles with their own trace consciousness fled into the physical world to escape an unknown cataclysm, and found themselves fused with the materials they fled into such as trees, stone, clay, etc. Groups of Mana operated as rudimentary bodies, until the Second Cataclysm, the Advent of The Tower, hit and a shock wave of unknown energy transmuted all Mortal Forms into flesh and blood, turning the Mana inert and thoughtless while granting the new creatures their own autonomy and consciousness. This was the biggest literal metamorphosis, as the setting would not exist without it!

There've been plenty of different metamorphosis' (metamorphi?) throughout Edda's existence, literal in the form of evolution or the spontaneous creation of many odd creatures, and metaphorical social changes and status quo shakeups that've marked the various different eras of the land. The latest one being the social shifts following the Border Wars that I alluded to in last weeks section, however another change going on is the rise of engineering technology, and a slowly gathering group of anti-magic activists working in beneficial and less than helpful ways alike.

Assignment 2 - Growth via Inspirations

Lately as I've been getting more into writing in my World of Darkness setting (check it out if you like urban horror fantasy), I've been leaning more into horror and how to write terrible people as the protagonists, as well as really dig into darker themes and portraying them in narration. Now, Edda itself is still a mostly light, or at least optimistic, story but there will be elements of gray with different protagonists and also in the antagonists and darker parts of the worldbuilding. As I mentioned in Week 1, I've worked to make Edda less utopian in order to have different avenues of conflict (that characters might even be able to fight against!) and getting a better mind for horror and darker settings has been a big part of that. I've also started trying black and white drawing as well, which has been fun to practice!

Week 4 - Tomorrow

Assignment 1 - The event starts tomorrow!

The future of Edda is one currently in flux! While the story I'm writing at the moment feature characters less prone to wax philosophically about it, plenty of characters would! The current generation is the first after The Border Wars, and the first embracing and fully born into a mass paradigm shift. The topics of technology, development, medical understanding, cultural understanding, reparations from the past, and moving past the limits of the known world are all over the landscape. Of course, in a fantasy setting, tomorrow also means prophecy, baleful warnings and omens of things to come, and there are certainly a plethora of hands moving behind the scenes to make their own formation of the future!

The two biggest influences, aside from the protagonists of course, would come down to King Diomedes the 3rd, and the enigmatic Raven. If I were to boil down the "big good" and "big bad" of Edda, it'd be those two, as Diomedes works behind the scenes to clear the baggage of the past to push for a brighter tomorrow, as well as invest effort into dismantling systems of oppression, including his own kingship in time. The Raven, on the other hand, is the Beast of Domination, and is an authoritarian who also wants to create a unified future, but in which they rule the systems of oppression rather than doing away with them. Both have their methods, their philosophies, and their secrets, and while a plethora of ideologies exist they are the most extreme diametric poles of Edda's future: free or restricted, equal either way in advantages or in limitations.

Assignment 2 - Preparation for Tomorrow!!!!

I am unfortunatley not a millionaire best selling royalty cashing author (yet, growth mindset), so I'm still on the work grind, and even on the job hunt for something more. That being said, writing is my first, second, and even third nature, and so I'm going to do my best to try and get at least one article out for each day I have off, more if I have the mental bandwidth for it. I have my desk, I have my support group, and I have the lovely people on the worldanvil discord to share it all with! Come what may, no matter what rank I get, I'm gonna have a fun time this summercamp!

Hopefully, if I knock out the weeks prompts fast enough, I'll even have time to continue my novel projects!

Assignment 3 - Sharing Plans

I have always had a bit of a problem when it comes to garnering an audience of sorts, which I try not to dwell on as it's secondary to, y'know, doing it anyways, but I crave feedback and recognition so sometimes it gets to me. I'm not gonna let that bother me this year, as I focus more on laying the groundwork for my novel writing, but I do still plan to share it!

First off, I'll be sharing any published articles with those who follow me already, and then sharing in the Discord either in the showcase or in the event channel, which I should hop back in soon cause it's been a HOT second (and a lot of crises) since I have done so.

Afterwards, I will be primarily sharing articles on my Bluesky , since I evacuated Twitter a while ago. I might share them to Instagram, but that's very dependent and would require different formatting. If I have time to spare I will figure that part out. That's really the only places I can think of to share my work to, but depending on what I can come up with, I might also begin making some video content about Edda, including shorts and such. But, that's a very theoretical kind of thing.

Finale

Well, that's all the homework, finished just in time! Work is picking up, but I am excited to put fingers to the keys and get back into worldbuilding.

In a moment of emotional honesty, I am genuinely a bit nervous for this challenge. The past two years I've really ridden the high of being able to excel at the challenge, but lately my focus on narrative writing, either for Edda or World of Darkness, has taken a big hold of my energy and desire. I don't think that's a bad thing, getting a novel finished brings me one step closer to publishing, and potential success! But I do still love worldbuilding, and I love this community we have here because of it, and I don't want to neglect either side of my writing process.

In any case, I'm gonna give it my all and let the chips land where they may. So, with Summercamp starting tomorrow, let's all grab our hammers and FAWKIN' WORLDBUILD! Happy summercamp, all! I'm excited to see what everyone comes up with!